The paddle steamer Bilsdale started life as the Lord
Roberts built by W Allsup and Son of Preston in 1900 for the Great Yarmouth Steam
Tug Company's excursion services along the Norfolk Coast. She was chartered to
Cosens of Weymouth in 1911 and 1912 before taking up work in the war as the
Earl Roberts. After that she was bought by Furness Shipbuilders for work on
the Tees and, in 1924, sold on to Crosthwaite Shipping to run excursions from
Scarborough.

They renamed her Bilsdale and put her into service with a schedule
generally running short trips along the coast to off Hayburn Wyke.
Scarborough was a busy resort and there was great competition between rival
boat businesses and local boatman which was exacerbated by the harbour being tidal. To
get the best trade everyone wanted to use the best berth which had the best
water on it for the longest period. When the tide was low there was not a lot of
water anywhere in the harbour. When the tide was up, the berth closest to
the shore was preferred so that potential passengers could be picked
off first. You can imagine how tempers could become frayed as operators and
boatmen vied for the
best position.

Inevitably disputes arose and sometimes these could be acrimonious and violent
as this 1951 press cutting, headlined "HARBOUR STAFF NOT AFRAID OF CARONIA
CREW Skipper Defends His men" at Scarboroughreveals. I can't find a similar press cutting
before the war but I do recall my father telling me that one of the crew of the
Bilsdale had been killed in a brawl with local boatmen.

I
don't know who the vicar, standing in the stern of the Bilsdale, is.

But I can identify the family group at the top of the companionway on
the Bilsdale in this picture taken in the late 1920s. They are, from left to right, my father Winston Megoran
aged about 14, his father Edwin, his sister Mary, his school-friend Kenneth and
his mother Edith. They were on holiday in Scarborough staying in a Bed and
Breakfast owned and run by the Fenbys.

They had a son called Eric, then aged
about 20, who was was very religious, a first rate pianist and organist at his
local church and cinema and so compelled by music that when he went out for a
walk he took a notebook with him to write down the sounds and calls of birds and
gulls.
Listening to the wireless one day around this time, Eric
heard that the composer Frederick Delius, who had also grown up in Yorkshire and
knew Scarborough well, had become paralysed and blind and was now
unable to compose. On an impulse he wrote to him, telling him of his musical
experiences in Scarborough and, much to his surprise, received a reply from the
composer's wife, Jelka, inviting him over. He stayed with the couple at their home in Grez-Sur-Loing near Paris on and off until Delius's death, taking
down and arranging all the composer's later works including the much played A Song of
Summer. Eric Fenby recounted his experiences with the very hedonistic and
irreligious composer in his excellent book Delius As I Knew Him which
itself
became the basis of one of Ken Russell's earliest television films for the BBC, Song of
Summer, in 1968.

The year in which Delius died,1934, also sounded the death knell for the Bilsdale, pictured here
at Scarborough that summer astern of her newly arrived competitor, the brand new Royal
Lady. Freshly built by John Crown & Sons of Sunderland she was powered by
Diesel, had much enhanced facilities and swept the board. The Bilsdale
made her last trip on 17th September 1934, retired defeated and sailed no more.

But what of that family group in the picture taken aboard the Bilsdale
more than eighty years ago? What became of them?

Edith died in Sunderland only a very few years after the
picture was taken.

Edwin married again, moved to Weymouth and died in 1950.

Mary became a teacher and headmistress in Acton before retiring to
Brighton where she died in 1995.

Kenneth Milburn went to sea, joined Cunard and sailed as first officer of the
Queen Elizabeth before coming ashore and becoming harbourmaster and then
Director of Marine at Hong Kong. He died in Milford-on-Sea in 2006.

Eric Fenby subsequently taught composition at the Royal Academy of Music in
London and remained a champion for the music of Delius throughout the rest of
his life. He died in Scarborough in 1997.

Winston Megoran became a distinguished marine artist. For more about his life
click here.

For another interesting picture of the Bilsdale aground in Scarborough
Harbour click here

Geoff Hamer emailed to say: There is some more about the BILSDALE in 'Bridlington Pleasure Boats' by
Frank Bull, published in 2010. The ship was owned and crewed in
Middlesbrough, so was resented by the local boatmen in Scarborough. The
fatal fight was on 27 August 1928 when local fishermen and some of the
BILSDALE's crew got into a brawl after spending the evening drinking. A
deckhand from the BILSDALE fell into the harbour, hitting part of the ship,
and died from his injuries. Two Scarborough men were charged with murder
but that was changed to manslaughter and they ended up being bound over for
three years to keep the peace.

The BILSDALE to me looks newer than she was, with her
white (?) hull and wheelhouse, both very unusual features on a British
pleasure steamer at that time.

JHM Response: Thanks
Geoff for your excellent work digging down to find the date of the fatal brawl.
It fits well with the photograph. Winston Megoran was born in October 1913 so
would have been going on for fifteen in the summer of 1928. That was also the year in which
Eric Fenby wrote to Delius so this event must have been the talk of the B & B
with Eric's parents doubtless apprehensive at the thought of their nicely
brought up, tea-total and God fearing son going off to live in the highly
eccentric, bacchanalian and libidinous household of Frederick Delius, a man who held the
concept of the Christian God in complete contempt.

My Auntie Mary, the little girl in the picture, followed the
fortunes of Eric over the years and took my younger self to a talk he gave on
Delius to a music club in Ealing in the early 1970s.